The 30,000 Dollar Bequest and Other Stories eBook

The above is from the Cincinnati enquirer, and is a falsehood.  Come to the proof.  If the enquirer people, through any agent, will produce at the galaxy office a London Saturday review of October 8th, containing an article which, on comparison, will be found to be identical with the one published in the galaxy, I will pay to that agent five hundred dollars cash.  Moreover, if at any specified time I fail to produce at the same place a copy of the London Saturday review of October 8th, containing a lengthy criticism upon the innocents abroad, entirely different, in every paragraph and sentence, from the one I published in the galaxy, I will pay to the enquirer agent another five hundred dollars cash.  I offer Sheldon & Co., publishers, 500 Broadway, New York, as my “backers.”  Any one in New York, authorized by the enquirer, will receive prompt attention.  It is an easy and profitable way for the enquirer people to prove that they have not uttered a pitiful, deliberate falsehood in the above paragraphs.  Will they swallow that falsehood ignominiously, or will they send an agent to the galaxy office.  I think the Cincinnati enquirer must be edited by children.

A LETTER TO THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY

Riverdale-on-the-Hudson, October 15, 1902.

The Hon.  The Secretary of the treasury, Washington, D. C.: 

Sir,—­Prices for the customary kinds of winter fuel having reached an altitude which puts them out of the reach of literary persons in straitened circumstances, I desire to place with you the following order: 

Forty-five tons best old dry government bonds, suitable for furnace, gold 7 per cents., 1864, preferred.

Twelve tons early greenbacks, range size, suitable for cooking.

Eight barrels seasoned 25 and 50 cent postal currency, vintage of 1866, eligible for kindlings.

Please deliver with all convenient despatch at my house in Riverdale at lowest rates for spot cash, and send bill to

Your obliged servant,

Mark Twain, Who will be very grateful, and will vote right.

AMENDED OBITUARIES

To the editor: 

Sir,—­I am approaching seventy; it is in sight; it is only three years away.  Necessarily, I must go soon.  It is but matter-of-course wisdom, then, that I should begin to set my worldly house in order now, so that it may be done calmly and with thoroughness, in place of waiting until the last day, when, as we have often seen, the attempt to set both houses in order at the same time has been marred by the necessity for haste and by the confusion and waste of time arising from the inability of the notary and the ecclesiastic